A user wishing to create a project plan may utilize a project management application, such as MICROSOFT® Office Project 2007, available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. Generally, project management applications help users to define project goals, to plan tasks and allocate resources, to display a project plan including a schedule, and to carry out and manage projects.
A project plan is composed of tasks. The schedule defines the sequence in which the tasks occur, the resources needed to complete each task, and calendar information pertaining to the tasks. Each task is defined to include one or more attributes (e.g., scheduled dates, task length, cost, etc.). In general, the user outlines a project plan by assigning values to the attributes of each task.
Advantageously, some project management applications provide a calculation model to track the relationship between different tasks and task attributes. The calculation model can compute the value of one or more task attributes automatically based on values assigned to other task attributes. For example, MICROSOFT® Office Project 2007 can calculate a project duration value based on a project start date and a project end date. These types of calculations generally are based on domain specific knowledge about project scheduling (e.g., number of work hours in a day, number of work days in a week, etc.) built into the calculation model.
One limitation of some of these project management applications is the rigidness of the user interface, which inhibits the ability of the user to “sketch out” a project using “fuzzy” task attribute values. These project management applications force users to enter attribute values meeting certain requirements. For example, the user can be required to enter values meeting recognition conditions (e.g., dates must be entered in an mm/dd/ccyy format to be recognized as dates). The user also can be required to enter values meeting predetermined logical conditions (e.g., a project start date must occur after a project end date).
A user who is only trying to get the general idea of how a project will sketch out, or whose initial goal is only to get a particular visualization for a report, may be frustrated by the level of detail required to create a project plan.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.